Supreme Court ruling could halt Middleboro casino plan

Kyle Alspach

Tuesday

Feb 24, 2009 at 12:01 AMFeb 24, 2009 at 2:16 AM

A U.S. Supreme Court ruling today could halt plans by the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe to bring a $1 billion casino to Middleboro. The ruling says the U.S. government doesn’t have the authority to set aside sovereign land for tribes recognized by the government after 1934.

A U.S. Supreme Court ruling today could halt plans by the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe to bring a $1 billion casino to Middleboro.

The ruling says the U.S. government doesn’t have the authority to set aside sovereign land for tribes recognized by the government after 1934.

The Mashpee tribe, which was recognized in 2007, is seeking to place more than 500 acres in Middleboro into a federal trust in order to open a resort casino on the property.

The court ruling suggests the federal government can’t legally place the Middleboro land into a trust, said Clyde Barrow, a UMass-Dartmouth gambling researcher.

The U.S. government argued that the law allows it to take land into trust for tribes regardless of when they were recognized.

But Justice Clarence Thomas said in his majority opinion that the law “unambiguously refers to those tribes that were under the federal jurisdiction” when it was enacted in 1934, according to the Associated Press.

Along with affecting the proposal by the Mashpee Wampanoags, the ruling “will throw a lot of things into confusion” for other tribes recognized since 1934, Barrow said.

The ruling comes in a case involving the Narragansett Indian tribe in Rhode Island and a 31-acre tract of land there.

At issue was whether the land, in Charlestown, R.I., should be subject to state law, including a prohibition on casino gambling, or whether the parcel should be governed by tribal and federal law.

The dispute dates to 1991, according to the AP, when the Narragansetts purchased the land to build an elderly housing complex, which remains incomplete.

Kyle Alspach can be reached at kalspach@enterprisenews.com.

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